LIVINGSTON — A soft-spoken Rev. Jacek P. Wozny addressed hundreds on Sunday from his temporary pulpit Sunday around 1 p.m., a tented stage at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden. The celebration at hand: The 2014 Polish Festival, sponsored by St. Stanislaus Kostka R.C., New Brighton, the sixth annual event which kicked off officially with words from the good pastor.

And, after Monika Niebirzydowski, 13, and sister Daria, 10, sang sweet renditions of Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, Poland's national anthem, side-by-side with the American National Anthem, attendees dug into music, food and chatter.

Meanwhile, two kinds of kielbasa sizzled on charcoal grills. South Beach residents Carolina Mackiewicz, 16, and sisters Patricia, 12, and Gabriella Pawlowski, 16, manned the food station where fellow volunteers scored the sausages before cooking.

However, the real showstoppers of the event — food, folk dancing and live pop music aside — proved to be Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz. He is the record-breaking Olympic Gold Medalist high jumper in 1980 who gave a jeering Soviet audience a bras d'honneur back to the saucy Russian crowd. The gesture — likened to the middle finger in the United States — presents as a crooked elbow with a fisted opposite hand punched into the "L" that the arm makes. That expression, in Poland, is called "gest Kozakiewicz," in salute to this white-haired, mustached man who now lives on Long Island.

FANS AND CHEERS

Rafal Kasprzak, one of the festival's emcees, interviewed Kozakiewicz while he stood on stage. They bantered in Polish about the former athlete's book and his memories. Scores of attendees held up cell phones to catch shots of the celeb. With a massive smile, he walked off the stage, after much cheering and clapping, followed by over a dozen fans. Yet to the surprise of a few, an encore performance of his famed gesture never happened.

Monika Tutka of Castleton Corners, secretary at St. Stanislaus, has been in her position through the evolution of the Polish festival. She coordinated this year's event which attracted at least 1,000 guests by mid-afternoon. She said that proceeds from raffle, food and beverage sales support the New Brighton church's educational programs for Staten Island's immigrant Polish community. Instruction includes Polish School which teaches language of the Old Country Fridays and Saturdays at the church.

On Sunday, performances included live music from the Nuance Band and ABBA Girlz.

This is the official sixth annual festival, one that hails from humble beginnings in the backyard of St. Stanislaus. The first year of the fete, as it is now on its grander scale, happened at the Richmond County Savings Bank Ballpark, St. George, with the sometimes somber, often festive, treasured Polish band, Budka Suflera. Subsequent festivals were booked at Snug Harbor.